1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal and a method for performing a function thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for displaying in a view mode using face recognition that may recognize an orientation of the eyes of a user using a face recognition function, and for automatically changing a view mode of the portable terminal based on the orientation of the eyes of the user to control the display of screen data thereof, and an apparatus thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
With development of digital technology, a portable terminal such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), an electronic organizer, a smart phone, a tablet Personal Computer (PC), etc., which are capable of processing communication and private information have been variously provided. The portable terminal has evolved to include various functions such as an image call, an electronic organizer function, a document function, an e-mail function, an Internet function, a voice call, and a Short Message Service (SMS) transmission function.
The portable terminal is continuously developing according to technological advancements and the needs of the user. In particular, a recent portable terminal supports a function that allows the user to rotate and use a screen in a horizontal or vertical orientation. Accordingly, corresponding screen data is set to be displayed in a horizontal or vertical orientation according to a type of screen data displayed on a screen. In this case, the screen data refers to various data displayed on a screen of the portable terminal, and may include dynamic images, still images, texts, menus, icons, application execution data, etc. To do this, the portable terminal includes a sensor (e.g., a gyro sensor) for detecting orientation information of the portable terminal, and changes a view mode of a screen based on a gravity direction detected by the sensor.
Further, a method of the related art for changing a view mode considers only an absolute direction of gravity without considering an orientation of the user. Accordingly, when a screen is automatically rotated based on only the sensor, if the eyes of the user are vertically aligned as the user lies horizontally, the eyes of the user disagrees with the view mode of the portable terminal that was set based on only the sensor such that the user cannot use the screen as it is. That is, although the user wants to display screen data suited to the orientation of the eyes of the user regardless of the orientation of the portable terminal, the user has to adapt their viewing orientation and view the screen data displayed according to the orientation of the portable terminal.
To address the foregoing problems, there has been proposed an approach that manually sets on/off an automatic view mode rotation. However, in the foregoing approach, when an automatic rotation function is turned-off, for example, to enter a horizontal view mode, the user should turn-on an automatic rotation function to enter in a horizontal view mode, wait for a change to another horizontal view, and then turn-off the automatic rotation function.